Home prices near Ashby high-rise skyrocket

The average home price in the nearby Boulevard Oaks area was $1.36 million in the first half of the year. That’s up 58 percent over the same period in 2012 and the highest increase among 18 high-end neighborhoods tracked by the Greenwood King real estate brokerage. The average sales price in the adjacent Southampton neighborhood was $1.2 million, up 29 percent from last year.

Homes in those neighborhoods have been selling at a faster clip than many others. The average time it took to sell a house from January through the end of June was 25 days for Boulevard Oaks and 23 days for Southampton, the Greenwood King report said.

Based on the numbers, residents can’t exactly complain their area has been negatively impacted. In an open letter to the developers, residents fighting against the project said the tower at 1717 Bissonnet at Ashby would “devastate” property values.

Come on Nancy. That “average price” reflects only the homes sold by Greenwood King. There are many other active realtors in the area. And none that you show in slideshow are within 2 blocks of the site.

Why would the values go down? Have you actually seen this site? Evidently not. The people who “back up” to this always backed up to an apartment complex, since that’s what the site was before demo.

Note: if anyone who is near, adjacent, or “backs up” to this site is feeling really bad and wants to sell at 2010 property values, you have a buyer right here. Please try to contact through this site if you are game.

I put an few offers on homes in that neighborhood when the high-rise was first announced. None of the residents accepted my offer to buy their house at market values before the high-rise was announced. Makes me think they knew all along that the property value argument was bogus.

Too funny!!!! It’s always interesting when facts get in the way of ideology! Rail along Richmond would drive up property values as well, but a lot of homeowners in Afton Oaks haven’t figured that one out yet.

“Furthermore, you can’t compare prop values of the entire neighborhood. A home 10 blocks away from the new development is not the same as a home immediately adjacent.”

But according to the Ashby opponents, everyone’s property values in the neighborhood would suffer. People 10 blocks away still vocally protested that they would be harmed. I agree that those people had no business in the discussion. But since they interjected themselves into the conversation, their house values should be counted.

This is a pretty big jump to make unless you look specifically at the homes near or adjacent to the Ashby. I have no skin in the game but it seems to me that those would be the most likely to suffer a loss in value or at the very least a depressed rate of appreciation.

I’ve heard people in my own neighborhood talk about how Chapter 42 changes will bring about development that will have a negative impact on our property values. They are mistaken. This type of development will take place in areas where the property value is stable and will increase. The problem is not with property values, it is with quality of life and demands on infrastructure.

Side note – Annise Parker campaigned saying she would challenge the Ashby development and developers. Instead, she has pushed through the Ch 42 amendments and spread the Ashby problem all across the city and to the ETJ.

Time after time, the “againers” are usually wrong. With the higher values, now, they can take their profits and move to a nicer neighborhood…if there is one. Just think, in 1968, you could have bought one of these Million plus houses for under $25,000…and, when they were first build, the price was $6,000 or less.

Realtors and sellers aren’t required to disclose the high rise going up down the street. Also, it is a tight real estate market everywhere. West U has seen inventory fall sharply. The issue may not be property values falling as much as property values not rising as much as they should have. And it is just a blog post, but why not actually do some real journalism and look up some sales closer to the site on MLS and see what the relevant trend is instead of just flipping open the report you got in the mail and making all sorts of unsubstantiated conclusions.

Bissonnet has always been lower priced property , but it is just wrong to put the traffic and visual pollution on the people who live in the neighborhood. The traffic and parking surrounding this building will be awful.

Yes, we all remember how prices plunged in Tanglewood after Four Leaf Towers were build or in River Oaks after they built the Huntingdon, right? No, that didn’t happen, they just kept building more multi-million dollar homes.

The “stop the ashby high rise crowd” are nauseating hypocrites. The signs with the sinister cartoon are simply pathetic. Do they have some legit grievance, debatable at best. However the portrayal of the Ashby development as a threat to world peace should be treated with ridicule. The “anti” crowd want special treatment by the city, and have used intimidation to get it.